Both you and your baby are going to sleep terribly, possibly for months, so you might as well get used to the idea.
But don’t freak out—this is totally normal. All you have to do is make sure everyone lives through this tumultuous time. Pretend there’s a zombie war going on outside and your priority is basic survival. Do whatever it takes to stay alive. Believe that this too shall pass.
For those of you in the midst of intense sleep deprivation, you would probably like to take your computer and throw it at my head right now. No one wants to be told “this too shall pass.” You want immediate solutions that will make your baby sleep so you can feel like a person again. Trust me, I know; I’ve been there.
And it’s not enough that you’re tired; you’re likely terrified that even minute bedtime choices will ruin your kid for life. Over 30,000 people responded to a Babycenter.com poll about toddlers sleeping in their parents’ bed, and it turns out that 44 percent answered that their children “almost always” co-sleep. When asked how they felt about it, 26 percent said “I love it,” but 43 percent called it “not ideal.”
Are adults who like to co-sleep doing something wrong? Some sleep experts say yes. There are plenty of sleep advice books out there, but they all offer different advice when it comes to getting your child to sleep.
So what do the authors of the leading sleep advice books have to say, from stern Ferber to groovy Pantley and a few others in between?
Richard Ferber, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems (Fireside, 1986, 2006)
If you’ve heard someone talk about “Cry It Out” (or CIO, or “Ferberizing”), that person is talking about the technique developed by Richard Ferber, director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital Boston. With CIO, you basically let your child scream his or her head off for specified, timed increments (which grow gradually longer over a few days’ time) until he or she finally figures out you aren’t coming and gives up (or passes out). I’ve always associated this approach with distraught parents who dread bedtime and their screaming children they feel forced to ignore. Once upon a time as a nanny, I was instructed to use this method at naptime for the children under my care, and let me tell you, it was no picnic (although it sometimes—not always—worked).
I was prepared to read “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems” with a derisive eye, already knowing that my parenting style didn’t jive with Ferber’s method. However, I discovered his technique, especially as explained in an updated edition of the book, isn’t quite as rigid as I had thought.
“Simply leaving a child in a crib to cry for long periods alone until he falls sleep, no matter how long it takes, is not an approach I approve of,” Ferber writes in the 2006 preface. “On the contrary, many of the approaches I recommend are designed specifically to avoid unnecessary crying.”
He calls his technique “progressive waiting” that encourages frequent (but somewhat detached, I thought) comforting throughout the process.
More helpful in the book is his section on helping your child learn new sleep associations–different ways to find comfort and go back to sleep after nighttime wakings. After all, it’s normal for both children and adults to wake during the night. Ferber suggests using a “transitional object” (like a favorite blanket) for comfort.
He also says that having a regular daytime schedule will help set a reasonable nighttime schedule, and that you must choose your child’s bedtime and keep it consistent.
What about co-sleeping? Well, the 1985 edition is clearly against the notion. “We know for a fact that people sleep better alone in bed,” he writes. (Is he suggesting that parents sleep in separate twin beds, like Rob and Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show”?)
“Sleeping in your bed can make your child feel confused and anxious rather than relaxed and reassured…If you allow him to crawl in between you and your spouse, in a sense separating the two of you, he may feel too powerful and become worried,” he writes. I confess I laughed out loud at that part, as I suspect many parents who have co-slept would. I wonder what an actual psychologist might say about that (maybe I should ask my father, a retired psychology professor who had no worries when I routinely slept with my parents as a child).
Ferber also insinuates that co-sleeping parents might have a screw loose. “If you find that you actually prefer to have your child in your bed, you should examine your own feelings carefully,” he writes, suggesting that such a desire hints at underlying selfishness or other issues that may require “professional counseling.”
Yet again, the 2006 edition has some changes to it, suggesting a more laid-back Ferber. Co-sleeping children, he writes, “are not prevented from learning to separate, or from developing their own sense of individuality, simply because they sleep with their parents. Whatever you want to do, whatever you feel comfortable doing, is the right thing to do, as long as it works.”
Elizabeth Pantley, The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night (McGraw-Hill, 2002)
The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers (McGraw-Hill, 2005)
Pantley is like the anti-Ferber. Your first clue is title: “No-Cry” and “Gentle.”Another clue is that she calls CIO “mutual agony,” noting that babies are totally dependent and cry to remind you they have biological needs that need attention.
As someone who champions co-sleeping (as long as you follow safety precautions) and has practiced it herself, Pantley is a favorite among followers of attachment parenting. However, she does not advocate constant tending at the expense of your own sleep.
She talks about “sleep association,” in which babies associate (and feel they need) certain things with falling asleep. Pantley says she nursed one of her children to sleep for at least a year, and disagrees that it’s a negative sleep association (as the other sleep authors discussed here propose).
“It is probably the most positive, natural, pleasant sleep association a baby can have,” she writes in “The No-Cry Sleep Solution.” “The problem with this association is not the association itself, but our busy lives. If you had nothing whatsoever to do besides take care of your baby, this would be a very pleasant way to pass your days and nights until he naturally outgrew the need. After all, this is natural. You may not even see this as a problem, in which case it is not. It’s all a matter of your perception and your personal needs.”
She does acknowledge that “few parents have the luxury of putting everything else on hold until their baby gets older,” so she recommends gradual (not cold turkey) changes, namely ending a feeding session when the baby is drowsy but still awake.
In her The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers, there’s an entire section called “The Nighttime Nursling.” In it Pantley sings breastfeeding’s praises, explains why a toddler might still want to nurse to sleep (and why parents may not want to give it up either), but suggests options like ending a nursing session gradually (following the blueprint laid out in her book the “Sleep Solution” ) and creating new routines. She even has advice on how to continue co-sleeping without breastfeeding.
“If your child is getting enough sleep, you are all sleeping well, and the people who live in your home are happy with the way things are working out, then nothing needs to be fixed, regardless of what anyone else has to say about your family’s sleeping solution,” she writes.
Kim West, The Sleep Lady’s Good Night, Sleep Tight (Vanguard Press, 2010)
In the interest of full disclosure: a photo of my son appears in this book and is used with permission.
Now that we’ve got Ferber and Pantly out of the way, this book is pretty middle-of-the-road, appealing to those who are wary of both CIO and co-sleeping. West, a licensed clinical social worker, seems more lenient with co-sleeping, but you can tell she’s not a huge fan (one of her chapters is called “Whose Bed Is It Anyway?”). If you invited West and Pantley over for a slumber party, Pantley would braid your hair and enthuse about co-sleeping bonding, while West would be at the foot of the bed saying, “Well, if it works for you, but…”
She’s coined a catchy phrase for her approach: The Sleep Lady Shuffle. It’s similar to CIO in that there are timed intervals of interaction, and the goal is to detach yourself from your baby as he cries—but you stay in the room for much of it. Over a series of nights, you move your position within the room closer to the door, using minimal touches to comfort the child, until you eventually find yourself outside the door.
She recommends against nighttime feeding entirely at a certain point. “One of my hardest tasks is convincing mothers that most healthy six- to eight-month-old babies on a normal growth curve don’t need to eat at night,” she writes.
Alison Scott-Wright, The Sensational Baby Sleep Plan (Transworld Publishers Ltd, 2010)
I recently read a very favorable Telegraph review for this book, so I thought I’d check it out. Scott-Wright, a former maternity nurse, sounds like a lovely woman who is well-liked by those who say they have found salvation through her help.
Alas, the actual sleep plan is nothing ground-breaking,and most of the book is devoted to infant feeding and consistently offers false information.
Scott-Wright makes a big deal about not vilifying women who are unable to or choose not to breastfeed, a sentiment with which I completely agree. But she goes to rather astonishing lengths—sometimes making statements that completely contradict research and what we have long known to be scientific truth—to make the point that formula feeding is actually preferable to breastfeeding.
“We all know, and are certainly told often enough, that ‘breast is best,’ but in my view it is better to adopt an approach that can be adapted to your lifestyle than to restrict yourself to a method that you may find difficult to maintain,” she writes. “I promote and support breastfeeding, but never to the detriment of mother or baby.”
Later, she lists seven benefits to exclusive breastfeeding (101 reasons can be found here), but 11 benefits to “Breastfeeding and expressing breast milk” and 13 to “Exclusive formula feeding.”
Some of the listed benefits to exclusive formula feeding are simply untrue, or are unsubstantiated opinions. We know that breastfeeding mothers do not have more dietary restrictions (she even includes a list of foods that “seem to cause problems,” including citrus fruit and curries). We know that breastfeeding mothers do not necessarily feel like “feeding machines.” We know that babies with reflux do not respond better to formula (good grief!) or that formula relieves a mother of “physical and emotional strain” (Um…ever hear of prolactin?). And it’s completely wrong (and dangerous, I feel) to suggest that formula-fed babies receive “more lasting satisfaction.”
Elsewhere, she suggests putting newborns on a breastfeeding schedule of 2-3 hours. She also includes recommendations on weaning, starting as early as 4 weeks of age. She devotes several pages to the common woes of breastfeeding problems, then writes, “It is a shame in today’s society that formula-feeding, when used in preference to breastfeeding, is almost frowned upon.” Research promoting breastfeeding over formula is “flawed,” she writes, right before several pages on how to choose bottles and nipples, making bottle-feeding sound absolutely fantastic—as if magical genies await your command to sterilize bottles and mix powder in the middle of the night. Dreamy!
Honestly, this book sets back breastfeeding promotion, I don’t know, let’s say a million years.
I really would like to say something positive about this book, but it takes three chapters to even get to what the “plan” is, and it appears to simply be a feeding schedule, which for newborns is every three hours during the day and every four hours during the night (with recommendations to supplement with formula by week two!), which again is counterproductive to establishing breastfeeding.
Near the end of the book, Scott-Wright addresses “sleep training,” which I assumed would be something along the lines of cry-it-out. But her sleep plan consists of creating a calm, quiet atmosphere, feeding the baby, putting him or her to bed and saying good night. If necessary, go back in to the room to reassure the baby, tell him good night again, and walk away. There are no timed intervals. If the baby cries, she simply advocates doing the same thing over and over again until it works.
In other words, it’s the kind of common sense “sleep training” that doesn’t require a book to explain it.
So, whose advice should you follow?
When I mentioned on Facebook that I was working on this article, I immediately got comments from very tired parents, pleading for information that would help their babies and toddlers sleep better… and several almost apologizing for their babies who slept through the night, no Ferberizing required, by three months.
I wish I could give you the definitive advice that will help your baby sleep better, but that’s impossible. Some advice makes sense—like having a consistent and early bedtime routine—but when it comes to selecting cleverly named sleep plans, methods of inching your way out of your kid’s room, or your comfort level for hysterical screaming, only you can choose what works for your family.
You could pick and choose the bits and pieces you like the best— a little Ferber here, a little Pantley there. To paraphrase a friend, “use what works and leave the rest.”
Remember my initial analogy. There are zombies out there, and you have not yet succumbed—no, you will not succumb. You will survive! When the tanks come in to blow off the undead’s heads, you’ll still be there—cozily tucked up in your bed, fast asleep. Just keep telling yourself that.
On January 12, Earth’s Best celebrated its 25th anniversary by ringing the NASDAQ Stock Market Opening Bell. Hours later, I was at the grocery store, standing at the register, watching the clerk slide each pretty little glass jar over the scanner. $1, $2, $3… $9… $18. I left the store with $30 less in my pocket and a (reusable) bag full of organic baby food. $30? I didn’t get more than a week’s worth, I thought to myself. But $30 is what it takes to feed my 8-month-old boy three square meals a day. Three square pesticide-free meals a day.
A carrot-filled spoon zooms overhead as a mother mimics the sound of an airplane. “Just two more bites,” she cajoles. Her two-month-old baby, positioned upright in an infant seat, clamps his lips shut. He doesn’t want the vegetable. But she persists until the last of the carrots are consumed. To even the casual observer, it’s obvious the baby doesn’t share his mother’s enthusiasm for carrots. At least—not yet.
I cultivated my sweet tooth at a young age, born into a family where Hostess Sno Balls and Twinkies were the preferred after-school snack. I could have/should have washed down the crumbly treats with a glass of milk, but chose instead an ice cold Coke—21 teaspoons of sugar, the equivalent of 90 grams or 450 calories. Is it any wonder that my siblings and I struggle with weight gain?
The day will come when U.S. mothers can truly feel safe breastfeeding their babies and young children anywhere, anytime, anyplace. I likely won’t live long enough to see the culmination of the cultural transformation that is currently underway in America, but I am confident that my children will one day view breastfeeding not as best, optimal, perfect, or ideal, but simply as normal. And I know that ultimately their children, my grandchildren, will reap the benefits.
Employed by the Red Cross after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, text messaging contributed to record donations. In less dire circumstances but indicative of the popularity of text messaging, millions text their vote for their favorite American Idol. But what can text messaging do for you?
First Lady Michelle Obama put eliminating childhood obesity at the top of her To Do list with the launch of Let’s Move, her much anticipated anti-obesity campaign. Mrs. Obama is hoping to reverse a dangerous and costly trend. Currently, one out of three U.S. children is overweight or obese. Among black children the rate is even higher, affecting one out of two children. For the first time since 1968, life expectancy is projected to decline.
New York Governor David A. Paterson announced last week that $6.98 million awarded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will “fund policy, system and environmental changes to improve nutrition, increase physical activity and cut tobacco use in New York.” Only five initiatives are part of the new wellness funding, and one of them is breastfeeding.
For the first time seven years ago investigators compared the effectiveness of belt-positioning booster seats (BPBSs) with the use of seat belts alone in children 4-7 years of age. They found that